http://medicalmuckraker.wordpress.co...gain/#more-368

"Said one EPA employee: “Anything that could look bad to the press isn’t being done. We’re completely ignoring the biggest environmental disaster ever in the U.S.”"

Did they really say this, why would they say this?

When you say 'experimental pathogens' could you be a bit more specific? What kind of experimental pathogens? When I hear that phrase, I think of something very specific--like Fort Detrick Special Pathogens Lab specific. Do you mean unfamiliar pathogens or novel, deliberately designed anthropogenic pathogens?

Out of sheer professional curiosity, what is your research speciality? I'm very interested in epidemiology as my 'third act'. Have been fascinated by the subject ever since I did reporting on the HIV/AIDS research back in the early 90's and was completely hooked by Laurie Garrett's brilliant book "The Coming Plague". So when you said you did medical science research my ears perked up.

Cheers
Aj

The problem I have with this article is that it isn't attributed. I could *say* that I know a biologist who says that they have vat-grown a bacteria that could dumped into the Gulf right now and would eat all the oil within a matter of days and then die off. That doesn't mean I have spoken to that scientist but I could say that I have. If I said, "<Insert Name Here> has written this paper which you can read here..." then that would have some veracity to it but, unfortunately, the article you linked to doesn't give us anything to go on. At a time like this, I am reminded of the old saw "a lie can be halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on". I'm not saying that the blogger in question is lying, but I'm rather suspect because there's absolutely no attribution, not even a hint of one.

Are you talking about the fire from the lightning strike or the fires lit to burn off some of the surface oil? I wasn't aware of widespread fires from this.

Yes lightning strikes. If a freak storm sets all that oil off it could be a nightmare of horror. Oil can also form a vapor cloud of it's own if it sits long enough due to all the vapors/gasses built into the storm itself. A storm cloud that is so heavy it could self ignite and pour down acid rain. Also if a hurricane is a giant blender than lightning can ignite a oil ball that spews out anywhere.

Actually, population has fluctuated sometimes wildly. Population has been on an overall upward trend for the last 40 or 50,000 years (but that was easy because all of us are descended from a population of no more than about 10,000 breeding pairs living about 50K years ago). But with various diseases Europe alone had two or three big die offs from plague alone (at least one of those was half the population of Europe and that's just one continent). It is almost certain that we cannot maintain 8 or 9 billion people (that number, barring a catastrophic event is a fait accompli at this point) without technology. There are (relatively) cheap energy sources that could be deployed now but I doubt that the United States will do them in a timely or sane fashion. As far as agriculture the thing that would be *most* useful is GMOs but, for reasons that mystify me, people seem to think that there is a fundamental difference between taking the genes of one living thing and randomly mixing it the genes of another living thing (what we've spent the last 12,000 years doing with all our crops and the last 20,000 years with animals) and taking the genes of one living thing and non-randomly mixing it with the genes of another living thing (genetic engineering). Certainly from the gene's point of view, those are equivalent.

Perhaps you are right. I read the article that Kam linked to to be saying that Bill Gates was saying we should use vaccines as a way of culling the population but it is certainly possible that I misread it.

Well I know there was one lightning strike on a ship and that a fire broke out because of it. I wasn't aware that this had happened multiple times during this incident. (I took your fires everywhere comment literally to mean that *currently* there were fires, well, everywhere directly related to this oil spill. I presume, now, that's not what you meant?)

As we speak, Fema is holding meetings in Florida and elsewhere discussing this possibility and solutions. I just read about it today in the Tampa Bay Tribune, and at Allspark.com. Lightning has set many fires off oil. Also these experts warn that the oil can act like a thermal blanket raising water temperature giving these storms more energy

We absolutely should stop all off-shore drilling at this point although, to be perfectly honest, I think it's *possible* to do it safely but corporations in America--for reasons that are pretty self-evident now--don't have to do common sensical things like drilling emergency relief wells.

Our priorities ARE out-of-whack. We *could* be phasing out private petroleum-powered vehicles for electric vehicles if we had started working on it, say, 20 years ago but we didn't. We could be largely off of fossil fuels for electricity generation had we poured research funds into solar, wind and fast-breeder nuclear reactors (which are far more stable AND feed off their own waste products) but we didn't. The oil situation isn't a surprise, it's been a known approaching issue for at least three decades now.

Cheers
Aj

Could I trouble you to post a link to the Allspark.com you are talking about? The url http://www.allspark.com takes me to a Transformers site and I'm reasonably certain that's not what you're talking about. I'd be interested in reading more about what these experts are saying.

Cheers
Aj

Drilling a second or third relief well only exacerbates the situation... Chances are, the entire seabed is about to erupt creating a “super tsunami” @ 400 – 600 mph …


http://www.helium.com/items/1864136-...-kill-millions

I don't know if this video has already been posted but it pretty much explains what's going on:

What's really going on with America's oilspill:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...0711843120756#

I have not been able to find a single reputable (read peer reviewed) source that confirms this. Everything I have been able to find has been breathless writings on various blogs which, as far as I can tell, all appear to be referencing one another. All of those appear to be leading back to Richard C. Hoagland who, not to put too fine a point on it, has no real credibility given his penchant for "the moon landing never happened" conspiracy theories. I checked at the USGS (US Geological Survey) and could find nothing about this. I checked at SciAm and New Scientist *both* of which have scientists reporting from the field on this spill and while there are articles about methane seeping up through the water column, no mention of a giant tsunami that could kill large numbers of people.

I think that what is happening in this instance is that there is an echo-chamber effect--one person screams out on their blog WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!! and then someone else, picking up that blog post writes on THEIR blog "some people are saying WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE" and then someone reads that post and writes on THEIR blog "I'VE SEEN THIS IN TWO PLACES ON THE WEB. WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!"

http://www.scientificamerican.com/se...&submit=submit

http://www.scientificamerican.com/bl...wat-2010-06-16

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...ne-to-gauge-si

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...-methane-study

I am NOT saying that it's impossible. I am saying that, at present, I have a hard time seeing any evidence for this event being at all likely (while still having a non-zero probability). The only people who appear to be saying that this kind of thing is likely to happen either aren't credentialed, won't cite their sources, or have a history of wild-eyed conspiracy mongering which seriously damages their credibility.

Cheers
Aj

Ummm...no. This is nothing more than some very thin conspiracy mongering. Isn't it possible--just *possible*, mind you--that this is a very tragic, very large, but ultimately very pedestrian industrial accident brought about by corporate incompetence and lax (read nonexistent) government regulation? I'm not asking if you think it's true, clearly you see some kind of fantastic machinations taking place, but I'm asking if you have considered the possibility that it might *NOT* be a giant conspiracy but just what it appears to be--an industrial accident of gigantic proportions.

EPA just released the results of their atmosperic tests at ground zero and they are downright scary. http:/gulfcoast.airtectnow.org/ for any of you living near the gulf to check daily. Clean up crews are getting paid 19-30 an hour by BP but are getting sick.

Could you please repost the link? The link you gave returns a 404 error.

Thanks.

Cheers
Aj

these geniuses have drilled into an active VOLCANO where oil and poisonuos gases are shooting up out of the ocean floor. This video was shot nowhere near the rig. [nomedia]http://youtube.com/watch?v=KbN7v8OTDdw[/nomedia]

Was this the site you were talking about?

http://gulfcoast.airnowtech.org/

This is an even better site:

http://www.epa.gov/bpspill/air.html

Could you explain what it is in the data that is scary?

Also the YouTube link didn't work.

What active volcano?

What is the name of the volcano? I Googled "active volcanoes Gulf of Mexico" and got no hits. So then I Googled "list of all active volcanoes" and none of the maps or lists show an active volcano in the coordinates corresponding to the Gulf of Mexico. Can you give us some more information, please?

If you are going to post this stuff, PLEASE give us the resources to look into this for ourselves.